You Can’t Steer a Parked Car
“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” Psalm 119:105
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I cried out loud to myself, shifting my car into park.
A distracted driver barreled into me at 35 mph while I sat stopped at a red light. Weak in the knees and jarred from impact, I called my husband and checked out the damage.
“Awww, it ain’t bad,” the driver said to me, (somewhat incredulously considering he hit me hard enough for his fender to now be laying in the road.)
“Yeah, it’s a little more than a scratch,” I muttered back, and suggested we call the police.
Scorching heat and a misty rain were the perfect companions to an already less than ideal situation. I’m sure I was a sight to passerby’s, with my high heels and butterfly umbrella, shielding my coiffed hair and carefully chosen outfit for an important meeting I was now late for. Sigh.
After a couple hours of insurance-exchanging, police-report-signing, and apology-laced phone calling, I was on my way. Shaken up, but okay.
However, when I woke up the next morning, every single body part screamed in protest. I downed some Advil for my aching neck and dragged myself to church to celebrate Father’s Day. In the middle of the message, my husband made a seemingly innocuous comment:
“It’s hard to steer a parked car.”
“Yeah, you don’t have to tell me that,” I laughed to myself, still reeling from getting rear-ended the day before.
Several weeks and a whole lotta chiropractor appointments later, I returned to normal. But the unwelcome experience shed some light on some unattended places in my heart.
It’s impossible to steer a parked car, and it’s difficult to get unstuck when life hits you from behind. Perhaps you’ve never been in a car accident (and I hope you never are!), but maybe you can relate to getting blindsided by an unexpected situation. When life doesn’t measure up to our expectations, we can get stuck in faulty thought patterns, lousy attitudes, and destructive choices.
A dead-end job or a lack-luster marriage can stir up feelings of resentment and disappointment. A broken-down body or a terrible habit we just can’t break can leave us shackled by fear and shame. Before we know it, we can find ourselves stuck in the car wreck of anger, held in failure’s suffocating grip. God offers to guide us and light the way ahead.
Here are three choices we can make when we feel stuck:
Get your car in the shop.
Our thought life is the vehicle that transports us from one place to another emotionally and spiritually. My car had external damage that required repairs as well as internal issues that only a professional could see and fix. When we get the car of our mind into the shop of God’s Word, He removes lies of the enemy and replaces them with His Truth.
Embrace adjustments.
Let God make the necessary adjustments through His presence. My neck was so stiff and tender at the first chiropractor appointment, I struggled to let go of tension so he could adjust me. Adjustments hurt; especially when our hearts are bruised from fresh wounds or our minds are stiff from cemented thought patterns. But Jehovah Jireh, the Great Physician, knows exactly what we uniquely need to experience healing and growth.
Just start somewhere.
The Holy Spirit guides us out of stuck places, but He requires our cooperation. We can’t just sit idly by and expect Him to do all the work. Explore new possibilities to reinvent or replace a humdrum job. Invest creative energies to renew a drained relationship. Connect with an accountability partner or counselor to experience freedom from that habit that has you bound. Just start somewhere.
Stop trying to steer a parked car. You weren’t designed to live a stuck life. You were created by purpose and with purpose. Take a step this week toward an unstuck life.
Make your life matter no matter what
With love,
Angela
